[.ca] Olives (ISBN 1899791388)

From Amazon.com:
After rice, corn, and wheat--the three staples of, respectively, East Asia, the Americas, and Eurasia--the olive is the foodstuff most closely bound to history, shaping the course of nations and empires. Mort Rosenblum, the author of the lively Secret Life of the Seine and many other books, gives us a wide-angle, altogether engrossing account of the olive's life and natural history, studding his narrative with conversations with farmers all around the Mediterranean. Rosenblum predicts an upsurge in olive cultivation in the United States as more and more people become aware of the fruit's many healthful qualities. If you have the urge to take up farming, read this fine book--you may be moved to put in some olive trees and try your luck.

The Politics and Economics of Olives and Olive Oil:
This delightful book by an American journalist based in France is much more about the geopolitics, history, and economics of olive growing than about the culinary role of olives and it's oil. It is also much more about olive oil than it is about the fruit, especially since commerce in the oil dwarfs trade in the fruit. Aside from it's being especially well written, it benefits most from it's being written entirely from a first person point of view. Aside from references to selected European Union regulations and documents, all of the text relates conversations between the author and his subjects, the olive growing farmers of the Mediterranian and California. The story starts in the author's own home where he himself raises olives in a small farm in Provence, France. From there, the story travels to other Provencal olive groves, Italy, Spain, Morroco, Greece, and Israel / Palestine. The book provides a wealth of information for your understanding of olives, olive growing, and the production of olive oil. The most interesting aspects of this story were the domination of olive oil commerce by Italian firms, in spite of the fact that Spain is the world's largest producer of olives and the differences between various methods of extracting oil and how these different processes may affect the quality of the oil. This book is a very good read, especially for foodies. Just don't expect much information about the culinary and nutritional values of olive oil. There are other books dedicated to olive oil which cover this very well.

Passion on Paper:
I'm gorging myself with olives: the fruit, the oil, this book. There are books you re-read years gone, but I found myself devouring clumps of this book just days after reading it in the conventional way. Mort Rosenblum could have given us an encyclopedic guide to the "noble fruit," but instead he follows his passions--and does first class journalistic digging--to press out the finest extra virgin essence of his subject. I also like the way Rosenblum writes, as much a friend as an authority. France, and its olive oils, comes first on the author's list, but he also does justice to subjects as disparate as the place of olives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the promising growth of the high-end California olive oil industry, and even the seemingly bottomless corruption on the olive oil front in the European Community. Few effective journalists write with such literary flair, without seeming to try too hard. A winner. Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

If you love olives, buy this book:
As an olive lover, I bought this book as soon as I saw it. Rosenblum discusses the sociological, historical, literary, religious, political, medicinal, geographic, gastronomic, gustatory, criminal, commercial, cultural, and horticultural world of olives, and the passionate and quirky people who love them. Throughout the book, the author describes his own journey from olive indifference to olive lover and grower. If you like travel writing, this book will especially appeal to you as you follow Rosenblum around the world in his quest for knowledge about, as he describes it in the book's title, this "Noble Fruit." Even if you are not fanatical about olives and olive oil--which I am--it is still a fun, fascinating read. If I could give this book more stars, I would.

GREAT READ!:
This is a great book! I bought a copy while visiting an olive orchard in Australia. Anyone interested in developing an olive orchard would find this book useful. Excellent travel writing to boot! I've even planted my own kalamata olive tree after reading the book . I'm so inspired I might even buy a home press.